Babel tells the (sad) story of the 155th Separate Mechanized Brigade: from Macronʼs blessing to work with “Skelya” and the suspicion of the brigade commander. Here are dozens of details that remained unknown

Summer 2024: Brigade formed and trained in France, visited by President Emmanuel Macron

In early February 2024, Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhny instructed to create a number of new brigades. Among them was the 155th. It was decided to make the brigade infantry. It was created in March 2024 and began recruiting people for it. The brigade was led by Colonel Dmytro Ryumshin.

Before that, Ryumshin led two brigades that participated in the summer offensive operation: first as deputy commander of the 117th Motorized Rifle Brigade, and then the 47th Motorized Rifle Brigade "Magura".

The brigade was formed by the Operational Command "West" (in particular, Commander General Volodymyr Shvedyuk, Chief of Staff Colonel Oleksandr Seletsky) and the Commander of the Ground Forces, General Oleksandr Pavlyuk. In May-July 2024, the brigade was staffed by more than 90 percent. At that time, the mobilization age was lowered in Ukraine, so young people were recruited into the brigade. They were supposed to undergo BZVP and go to France for professional training.

But at the end of July and the beginning of August, the new commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrsky, ordered to remove half of the personnel from the brigade and replenish the already operating brigades with them. Among these brigades were those that had been attacking in Kursk since August, but the largest number of people were transferred to one of the brigades that defended Toretsk.

“They took all the conscious fighters,” an interlocutor familiar with the process of forming the brigade tells Babel. Among them, most of the young fighters were taken from the brigade.

In August 2024, it was decided to transform the brigade into a mechanized one. This meant that the brigade needed new specialists and equipment. The brigade had to be reorganized and recruit such people by September 30.

But the training in France had already begun on September 20, so they went with the composition that was there. For the most part, these were people whom the TRC picked up on the streets, at checkpoints, or even at the border, says a soldier who was in the brigade at the time.

“There was one recruit who was cross-eyed (both of his eyes were looking at his nose), and he was assigned as a sniper — and this is no joke,” says the soldier.

Despite everything, he had good impressions of the brigade: “Everything looked good, they were fed well, the training plans looked optimistic, the commanders were young and supposedly not Soviet,” says the soldier.

Soldiers of the 155th Brigade on exercises in France.

155 окрема механізована бригада / Facebook

155 окрема механізована бригада / Facebook

Almost everyone was sent to France for training: even those who did not have time to pass the basic military training and were in the army for no more than a week. The main units went there: the first, second and third mechanized battalions, brigade headquarters and artillerymen — a total of about 2 000 soldiers.

For most recruits, the training was useful: the infantry rifle training, the training of scouts, artillerymen, and anti-aircraft gunners was very high-quality. Driver-mechanics were separately trained to operate French equipment.

There was also staff training, where they were taught classical warfare, says an interlocutor of Babel familiar with the brigade training process.

During the Ukrainian military training, the French president visited and even published a video of the exercises. The French were the first to name the brigade after Anna of Kyiv, even before the brigade was officially given the honorary name.

Winter 2024: the brigade returns to Ukraine, is taken apart, the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) investigates the causes of the mass shooting and declares the brigade commander under suspicion

As an international project, the 155th Brigade was to be the first, but not the last. After it, it was planned to create the Northern Brigade, which was to be trained and armed by the Scandinavian and Baltic countries. But this did not happen.

Only part of the brigade was trained in France, the rest of the soldiers were trained in Ukraine. Therefore, the brigade had to undergo combat training, then advance to the front and take over its area.

“We had to return to the training ground, replenish our personnel, conduct training with those who had undergone basic training in Ukraine by the end of July. We thought that after that we would be put into action. Then we found out that we were going to the Zaporizhzhia direction to the third line, we were already looking for a place for the permanent deployment point,” recalls a soldier who served in the brigade.

The brigade returned from France to Ukraine in batches. It was unable to gather and coordinate, it was taken apart. The first batch of guys ended up near Pokrovsk, where the hottest battles were taking place at that time. The soldiers were sent to Pokrovsk while the brigade command was still in France.

In addition, the brigade immediately took away the artillery division trained in France, which was supposed to work on “Ceasar” self-propelled artillery mounts. The men and weapons were transferred to another brigade.

At the end of December, the 155th brigade came under the operational control of the Pokrovsk Military District, but individual battalions and units were transferred to other units for operational control. Since then, the brigade has never been reunited.

On December 7, 2024, the MP Maryana Bezuhla wrote about the problems in the brigade. During December, other journalists and volunteers wrote about the poor provision of the brigade with weapons and UAVs.

And on December 30, journalist Yuriy Butusov published an interview with the commander of the 2nd battalion, who was forced to storm the landing site alone together with the support unit, because the company commanders refused to do so. In the interview, he said that the brigade lacked enough soldiers, and some of those who were there did not undergo basic military training and did not even have the right to carry weapons.

Later, it turned out that the brigade was provided with no more than 40 percent of some types of military equipment. The equipment from France also did not have time to arrive in full.

The State Bureau of Investigation began investigating the criminal case. But they were not investigating the poor training or provision of the brigade, but the fact that more than two thousand soldiers had escaped from it. In France, 55 people escaped from the brigade, and half a hundred escaped when, instead of settling at the training ground or the third line in Zaporizhzhia, they ended up near Pokrovsk.

SBI conducted an investigation based on materials from the SBU military counterintelligence. The brigade commander Dmytro Ryumshin was blamed for everything. He was in conflict with the leadership of the OC "West" and the OTG "Donetsk".

In December 2024, he was removed from his post. The trial is currently underway. Ryumshin is the only defendant in the case, the investigation had no questions about the operational command.

In December 2024, Taras Maksimov was appointed brigade commander. He received an incomplete brigade. One mechanized battalion was subordinate to the 32nd Separate Mechanized Brigade, several tanks with crews were transferred to the 68th Separate Chasseurs Brigade, one self-propelled battery was transferred to a tactical group, and some of the fighters were on training.

The brigade held a small section of the front near Pokrovsk. It often lost positions, although it was able to regain about a quarter.

2025: The brigade regains combat readiness, but its brigade commander is removed due to a "misunderstanding" with the commander of the 425th Separate Assault Battalion Yuriy Harkavy

Mykhailo Drapatyi headed the Ground Forces on November 29. As early as early January 2025, he reported to the president on the situation in the brigade, and later published a post with the main points of the report.

According to him, officials took a formal approach to the formation of the brigade: they poorly planned its training, and the higher command reacted too late to the problems.

“Most of the shortcomings made by the Joint Forces Command, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and the West Command at all stages of the formation of the 155th Brigade have been analyzed, assessed, and decisions on certain issues are already being implemented,” Mykhailo Drapatyi wrote at the time.

Then he announced that the Land Forces Command would help the new brigade commander. A working group headed by Colonel Oleh Mykolaychuk was sent to the brigade. Together with brigade commander Taras Maksimov, they managed to put the brigade in order.

The brigade returned a self-propelled battery, organized the training of machine gunners, grenade launchers, and LNG gunners. For those who did not have time to undergo basic military training, a new training was organized.

“According to the reviews, [Taras Maksimov] was a not bad commander, the good one,” says an interlocutor of Babel, familiar with the work of the working group.

In early February 2026, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky decided to change the brigade commander of the 155th brigade. Taras Maksimov was sent to the 16th Corps, which is responsible for part of the Kharkiv region.

Then, in April 2026, he headed the 14th Separate Mechanized Brigade after the previous brigade commander was dismissed there.

The new commander of the 155th brigade was Stanislav Luchanov, the chief of staff of the “Skelya” assault regiment.

According to two Babel interlocutors at the operational and strategic levels familiar with the situation in the brigade, Maksimov was removed due to a “misunderstanding” with the commander of the “Skelya” regiment Yuriy Harkavy.

2025-2026: the brigade holds the front line well, but it is led by "graduates" of "Skelya" — and it ends in tragedy

Units of the “Skelya” assault regiment entered the Pokrovsk direction in November-December 2024. The 155th brigade began to be involved in their assaults.

“A combat order comes — to transfer 20-30 people to “Skelya” and that’s it,” says an interlocutor of Babel familiar with the process of forming the brigade. Thus, in March 2025, units of the 155th brigade, together with “Skelya”, fought for the small village of Shevchenko near Pokrovsk.

A former soldier of the 155th brigade says that there were days when the number of dead was counted in dozens. But in those battles, he says, “many boys became warriors”.

“The area for which the 155th brigade was responsible held for a long time and held steady, the brigade went through this formation,” he says. Another interlocutor of Babel at the strategic level confirms that the 155th brigade became quite adequate: it was able to carry out tasks, it had a well-developed direction of unmanned systems.

Since the 155th Brigade and the 425th “Skelya” Separate Assault Battalion worked in the same direction, they interacted a lot. In February 2026, after the dismissal of Taras Maksimov, the commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky appointed Stanislav Luchanov as the commander of the 155th Brigade.

Then, as several interlocutors of Babel at various levels say, the brigade came under the influence of “Skelya”. Luchanov maintained close ties with the regiment commander Yuriy Harkavy. In addition, he took officers from “Skelya” with him to the brigade.

The atmosphere in the brigade changed. Formally, the brigade was never subordinate to an assault regiment. But some people in the brigade were afraid that they would be transferred to “Skelya” as punishment.

“Some personnel fraud began. For example, the commander ordered to transfer people from the ʼSkelyaʼ to the 155th brigade,” says the interlocutor of Babel.

Then, almost a thousand people were transferred from “Skelya” to the brigade. It turned out that some of them were “dead souls”, they either died or went missing. The Deep State project believes that some of the losses were transferred to the 155th brigade in order to reduce the number of deaths in “Skelya” (the interlocutor of Babel says that this was simply a mistake by the personnel department of the “Skelya”).

In May 2026, another scandal erupted around the 155th brigade. A soldier of the 210th UAV Systems Battalion(assigned to the “Skelya”) Anatoly Rudenko, brutally beat a soldier of the 155th brigade Serhiy Malenko, who was seconded to the regiment.

The incident occurred at the training ground of the “Skelya” regiment. Serhiy Malenko was tied up, Anatoly Rudenko kicked him in front of the formation of soldiers who watched in silence. Serhiy Malenko said that after the beating, a senior sergeant (he did not specify of which battalion) forced him to put on a bulletproof vest and run another 5 kilometers under the supervision of armed soldiers. After the scandal, the State Bureau of Investigation detained the attacker and declared him a suspect.

And on the night of June 28, 2026, soldiers of the 155th brigade kidnapped two residents of the village of Kalynivka (Maksym and Roman Moseychuks), took them to a training ground in the Poltava region and killed them. The investigation claims that the military acted on the orders of the brigade commander Stanislav Luchanov. Luchanov was dismissed from his post.

The new brigade commander is Colonel Andriy Kroka. Since January 2025, under the call sign "Pifahor", he has commanded one of the mechanized battalions of the 155th Separate Assault Brigade in the Pokrovsk direction.

The Deep State project claims that the soldiers of the 155th brigade are happy with his appointment. After all, he is a person from within the brigade, and not from the "Skelya" regiment. An interlocutor of Babel at the operational level believes that Andriy Kroka will be able to strengthen the brigade.